Are Career Paths the Best for Professional Advancement?

When the Kennewick school district where he relocated refused to grant him a teaching license because he could not fill certain requirements, bureaucratic snares turned his life into endless drudgery. To pay his rent and mounting bills, Helton was forced to take a series of manual-labor jobs, which included working as a ditch digger, welding inspector and retail stock clerk.

But during this difficult period, Helton discovered a new passion: technology. He saw it hardly as a career path, but rather as a way out, an uncharted road to a better life—a new future.

Helton is a self-taught techie. He read everything he could get his hands on. For practical, hands-on knowledge, he repaired and rebuilt trashed and discarded computers that had been deemed unsalvageable by their owners. Surviving on three or four hours of sleep a night, Helton taught himself how to program.

When a low-level computer technician's job opened at Yakima's Department of Transportation, Helton jumped on it with a vengeance. So began his IT career. His hard work and persistence paid off, and 20 years later he landed his job as a senior technology executive for Yakima County.

From State-Hospital Attendant to Railroad Brakeman

Fifty-four-year-old Costello's career was equally unconventional. By the time he entered college, he still didn't have a clue what he wanted to do with his life. When he graduated with a degree in philosophy—a far cry from IT—he took a job working as a technician at Illinois State Hospital.

Two years later he made a career swerve and took a job working for the Chicago and North Western Railway as a brakeman in the freight yards. After five years, a coworker told him about his own part-time job programming electric organs while studying computer science at night. Costello had always been interested in computers, so he taught himself how to program. He enrolled at Chicago's DeVry Institute of Technology and went on to land a degree in computer science. He finally found his passion.

But he said it was hardly a career path: "I needed a job, and the only one I could get was a low-level position as a programmer," says Costello. He wasn't upset about it, either. He deemed it a start—and he was happy he got it.

The rest is history, as they say.

The Big Message: Chuck Career Paths, Redefine Career

Gee doesn't find Helton's or Costello's career changes unusual. Finding something you love to do, he says, can often be a lifelong process. Some discover their passion early in life; for others, it takes a lot longer.

"If you're building a technology career, you're forced to constantly alter your path because the technology is always changing," Gee explains. "Whether you're developing software or you're running an IT organization, you have to be prepared to adjust to constant change."

Rather than obsess about finding a career path, Gee says that we ought to rethink our definition of the word career. "Clearly, our careers ought to be redefined at different stages of our lives," he says.

Helton adds that our careers, and the roads we take to achieve them, ought to be reframed within the context of our lives. "It is not what we do that determines who we are," he says. "Who we are determines what we do. I've discovered that our lives ought to be bigger than ourselves. Life has to be about more than ourselves."

As for Costello's take on career paths and life in general, "I've thought a lot about career paths," he muses, "and to this day, I'm not sure I was ever on one. I might have thought I was, but I was just jumping from one opportunity to another with an underlying goal to be the top IT man in whatever company I was working for."

Discovering Value and True Calling

Looking back, Costello says his early career was defined by a need to change and grow. As he moved through a series of IT jobs, he realized how valuable he was to a growing company. As a CIO, he defined his role as an "IT rebuilder." "But I never saw myself as being at the end or pinnacle of an IT career path. I saw what I did as a calling," he says.

As for this whole notion of a career path, Costello says that although he's smarter, wiser and more knowledgeable than he was 20 years ago, he's still growing. But he has learned one powerful lesson: "Be open to change. In IT, it never stops."

Costello's last words on career paths: If we have to have a buzzword to describe the development of a career, Costello opts for "career journey." "That's how my career has developed," he says. "It's been a journey—a road trip full of good, bad and incredible experiences. And it's not over yet."